


The Further and Somewhat Inebriated Adventures of Pocket Julian

by bmouse



Series: The Adventures of Pocket Julian [2]
Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Fluff, Gen, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-07
Updated: 2014-05-07
Packaged: 2018-01-23 23:11:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,139
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1582880
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bmouse/pseuds/bmouse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Intrepid Lilliputian Accessibility Researcher Julian Bashir, somewhat nervous over still being 5 inches tall a week after his 'accident', prescribes himself some back-to-normal behavior and goes out drinking with Chief O'Brien. ( or more accurately: Miles carries him to the bar. )</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Further and Somewhat Inebriated Adventures of Pocket Julian

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place several days after the first story.

Nights at Quark’s haven’t really been the same. It’s much easier for him to get drunk for one thing. Much cheaper too. Quark does offer to sell him a regular-sized synth ale but the sales pitch, delivered by a gesticulating teal-and-magenta-suited giant rather ruins the illusion of normalcy. The Ferengi’s ears, Julian notices, are meticulously maintained - clean and smooth as canyon walls but the less said about his teeth the better.

Besides, the way he is now he could drown in a regular-sized synth ale. He types as much on the Mini-PADD Miles had thoughtfully pocketed before bringing him to the bar. Mini-Bashir apparently comes with his own line of accessories now. Earlier today Julian had watched him fiddle with the magnifier and microcircuit manipulator working on a little-headset with a set of matching earbuds for all his colleagues. He seemed to be having a jolly old time with it. Now the trick is to get him him to make an extra one for Garak. 

When he gets back to normal he should really work on integrating his social circles so that requests like that wouldn’t get him a look as if he’d asked Mars to go slightly out of its’ way and orbit Saturn. 

Not much progress on the getting-to-normal front though. Today he’d proxy-dictated one of the new Bajoran rotation doctors through a complex surgery, it had gone pretty smoothly. Double takes were down to a minimum, soon no one would even bat an eye at having to use a PADD to understand him and an optic overlay to see his expression. Maybe that was why he’d noticed little tendrils of panic starting to wind themselves around his lungs just after work. He promptly prescribed himself a heavy dose of back-to-normal behavior hence why he’d grabbed his best drinking mate and was now pulling his head out of an alcohol-filled thimble. 

Still, it’s hard to ignore how everyone’s been adjusting but him.

Miles even made him a special box for easy transport. Funny, he trusts Garak implicitly to get him from place to place unharmed with only his cupped hands but then again most of his other friends hadn’t been trained to within an inch of their lives. Morning traffic to Ops or the end-of-day rush to the bar could be disastrous when all pedestrians had the relative mass of a skyscraper and something else was definitely needed for his other volunteer-chauffeurs. 

"You’ve always been a bit of a gangly thing, legs and elbows everywhere. First time I saw you I thought: that man trips on the stairs and he’ll go crunch, good thing he’s a doctor! But now your wee bones haven’t got the strength of a toothpick." the Chief had said gruffly, before gently placing the patented ‘Don’t Break Bashir Box’ on the endless plane of his desk.

The walls are transparent, the outside is industrial-strength unbreakable starfleet ship-glass (minus a few air holes) and the inside has it’s own low-g field with inertial dampeners. He’d apparently tested it by putting an egg inside and dropping it from incrementally ascending heights. All hail the engineering process.

He’d been touched, really. It’s the second box he’s been given since the accident and arguably the most useful. Secretly, very secretly, Tain-himself-couldn’t-get-it-out-of-him secretly he likes the one he’s got in Garak’s quarters better. It smells nicer, being made of a soft juniper-y wood and maybe his not-so-secret vanity enjoys that no Babylonian conqueror has ever had a bed this fine: lined with Tholian silk and inlaid with beaten gold, trimmed with mother-of-pearl from an alien sea. Something to showcase a treasure, instead of this very thoughtful specimen container.

But no! He bangs his thimble down on the table for emphasis and spills a drop of bubbly Springwine all over his one good pair of shrunken-shoes. It’s too early for defeatist whining! A hero shouldn’t turn back just because the adventure has taken him a little (haha, little) farther than he’d ever thought to go or lasted longer than he’d planned. Right? Right! Oh his head was floating now - the thimble was very pretty and appropriately chalice-like but it was dangerous, even worse than those giant souvenir cups on Risa. 

Now was the time to appreciate that he had so many people willing to help, to deal with him as he was.

Jadzia was even using his circumstances as a preliminary study into integrating the Piann-ter, who had been demanding entrance slots at the Academy for years but had been stalled in the paperwork pipeline because even their full-grown women never topped six inches.

It’s a very important study. Definitely not just an excuse to see him and she does spend a lot of their time together writing down his ideas on accessibility - on what’s worked well and what hasn’t. It’s just afterward he helps her get her nail decals even, or types little proofreader notes in the margins of her research papers as she’s gently prodding his into shape. Sometimes as she’s catching him up on station gossip she lets him walk through the waterfall of her hair. 

If this hadn’t happened to him he might never have known that up close each of the spots on her temples has a fractal outline - the thing within itself.

He and Miles could play a whole new host of games now. Among them: Repair the starship-inna-bottle model, rescue Molly’s missing favorite hairclip from the Undercouch Dust Beasts and, currently, betting how many times Julian could jump from finger to finger on his hands without tripping or falling off. When he got tired he could clamber up and spread himself like a strafish on Miles’ warm hairy wrist and drowsily declare that Cardassian sunning-rocks were a pretty brilliant idea after all if they were anything like this. ( Maybe he could find one in storage, though definitely with a blanket on top for padding ). Nobody could hear him as he sang his half of their “Johnny Come Marching Home” duet but Miles left the space open for him anyway, no matter how odd it must have sounded to everyone else at the bar. 

No wonder he ends up hugging the nearest bit of him, clinging like a limpet to the Chief’s thumb as he gently nudges him into the safety box and pockets the empty thimble.  


He’s definitely drunk. Grateful and drunk. Really grateful for all of it. All the way through, to the end of the night. 

Grateful for the two men standing across from each other in the empty station hallway, strings of tension between them waiting to be plucked. For Miles not making a face as they both kneel down, as he opens the carrier box and lays his hand flat, touching the very edge of it to the Cardassian’s broad gray palm so that Julian can stumble across.


End file.
